Monday, November 18, 2013

Excellent unemployment piece in the NYT

A five-year spell of unemployment has slowly
scrubbed away nearly every vestige of Ms. Barrington-Ward’s middle-class
life. She is a 53-year-old college graduate who worked steadily for
three decades. She is now broke and homeless.

Ms. Barrington-Ward describes it as “my journey through hell.” She was
laid off from an administrative position at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 2008; she had earned about $50,000 that year. With the
recession spurring employers to dump hundreds of thousands of workers a
month and the unemployment rate climbing to the double digits, she found
that no matter the number of résumés she sent out — she stopped
counting in the thousands — she could not find work.

“I’ve been turned down from McDonald’s because I was told I was too
articulate,” she says. “I got denied a job scrubbing toilets because I
didn’t speak Spanish and turned away from a laundromat because I was
‘too pretty.’ I’ve also been told point-blank to my face, ‘We don’t hire
the unemployed.’ And the two times I got real interest from a
prospective employer, the credit check ended it immediately.”

For Ms. Barrington-Ward, joblessness itself has become a trap, an
impediment to finding a job. Economists see it the same way, concerned
that joblessness lasting more than six months is a major factor
preventing people from getting rehired, with potentially grave
consequences for tens of millions of Americans.

Annie Lowry nails it here. Great piece of reporting. Read it. Then read it again. Then staple it to the forehead of your local policymakers and HR directors.